


All Nature Is Our Satellite

by prof_pangaea



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Best Friends Forever, Gen, Journaling, M/M, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sussex, Thoreau is the perfect writer of repressed homosexual love, Watson is love, a rare specimen of manhood, post-reichenbach buddhist vegetarianism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prof_pangaea/pseuds/prof_pangaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes is living in the country, retired from detection, keeping his bees. Watson is living in London, remarried, and back in practise. A rare weekend visit to Sussex gives Watson a little insight into his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Nature Is Our Satellite

**Author's Note:**

> The text of Mr. Thoreau's journal entry used herein is not, unfortunately, from the fourteen volume 1906 edition published by Houghton Mifflin that Holmes would have owned, but from the more recent Princeton edition. There are marked differences in punctuation in the two texts, but the words themselves are usually the same. Any errors in transcription are my own. First posted in October 2005.

7 August 1908

How strange it seems, upon reflection, that I should still breathe the stale, heavy air of London while Holmes, who seemed always to have an almost symbiotic relationship with this city, lives the healthy and uncomplicated life of a gentleman in the country. I often pondered it when Holmes first settled in Sussex so suddenly; in fact, I did not think that he could possibly be serious, and every week expected to hear from him that he was coming back. As the weeks turned themselves into months, and then years, I must simply have got used to the notion, but I do not believe that I have ever really believed it, somehow. 

My mind must turn to such thoughts because it anticipates seeing the man in question tomorrow. The first time in over a year -- what a ridiculous amount of time. Why don't I see him more often?

 

8 August 1908

"So how is Mrs. Watson getting along in Edinburgh?" Holmes said this as we walked to his house from the station this afternoon. What an infuriating man he is. I did have the good grace to look chagrined, at least, for not having mentioned it myself. 

"Holmes, you know her trip was not the sole reason for my journey south; it merely gave me a convenient opportunity." Holmes put up an innocent look.

"I don't recall making any sort of _accusation_ , doctor."

"You needn't say these things aloud, you know; you've got rather expressive eyebrows."

With that he burst out laughing. 

Once my things had been situated within Holmes' small cottage he took me out to his hives. I am not a good judge of these matters, but they seemed even more prosperous than the last time I had seen them. I watched Holmes as he tended to his bees. His movements were fluid, and his eyes intent as he studied the inner workings of each hive, and it suddenly struck me that he seemed -- well, content. Strange, but I don't think I have ever seen him actually content before.

The hives were followed by a long and rambling walk across the downs. Our conversation was irregular; for the most part we simply walked side by side, listening to our trudging footfalls and the breeze as it passed through the long, waving grass. We found ourselves (or perhaps Holmes had guided us) before the edge of the chalky cliffs, and I gazed at the seemingly endless water. I glanced over at Holmes, and saw that he was watching me.

"Holmes?" I said. I thought for a moment he might speak, but instead, he looked away over the cliffs, and a slight smile appeared on his face; a very mild expression, but it seemed to contain immeasurable volumes. Before I could think of anything to say Holmes turned his back on the water.

"You must be hungry," Holmes said. "What do you say to stopping at the village inn for a bit of supper? It's closer than my cottage, and you shall be able to get something heartier than I can provide."

"A splendid plan, Holmes. Indeed, now that you have called my attention to it, I am quite famished."

We sat in the inn, I over my roast beef and Holmes over his simple vegetable stew, and talked for a good many hours. 

 

9 August 1908

When I woke today there was a delightful smell of breakfast in the air, despite the lack of meat in the household. Eggs, toast, potatoes, crumpets, and four different types of honey awaited me in the small dining area -- but not Holmes. He had apparently risen early and was already out and about, perhaps looking after his hives, or perhaps simply walking. After satisfying myself as to the special qualities of each honey (as a guest I saw it as a special duty to try each one) I decided against trying to follow Holmes. I did not care to find proof of my ignorance as to the workings of his mind by trying to deduce where he had gone from his left bootlace. 

Instead, I wandered over to his bookcase to find a volume suitable for browsing while sitting in the clear country air. There were quite a few familiar volumes from our time together in Baker Street -- I noticed the much battered Martyrdom of Man resting in an honoured position on the second shelf. One shelf below this was a collection that caught my eye -- the collected journals of H.D. Thoreau that I had sent Holmes the year before as a Christmas present. They appeared to be well-thumbed, which made me happy; Holmes had never mentioned wanting the set, but I remembered his interest in Thoreau from our early days together in London. 

I pulled the first volume down and began perusing the pages. I saw that Holmes has continued his deplorable practise of dog-earing his place within the book. Also, there were innumerable notes scattered throughout the entries, sometimes long discursive thoughts, and sometimes short statements like _Would that not prove impossibly trying on each succeeding generation?_ and _bad poetry. very bad._ Soon I came upon a dog-eared page with no notes of any kind, save at the beginning of an entry, one pencilled mark that I remembered well from Baker Street -- the same mark that I used often to see next to newspaper articles, clippings, essays, and agony columns, a simple mark that denoted interest.

 

__

Friendship-- Fall of 1839

Then I first conceive of true friendship, when some rare specimen of manhood presents itself. -- It seems the mission of such to commend virtue to mankind, not by any imperfect preaching of her word, but by their own carriage and conduct. -- We may then worship moral beauty without the formality of a religion.  
They are some fresher wind that blows -- some new fragrance that breathes. They make the landscape and the sky for us.

The rules of other intercourse have quite lost their pertinence when applied to this. 

We are one virtue -- one truth -- one beauty. All nature is our satellite, whose light is dull and reflected. She is subaltern to us -- an episode to our poem -- but we are primary and radiate light and heat to the system.

I am only introduced once again to myself.  
Conversation -- contact -- familiarity -- are the steps to it -- and instruments of it, but it is more perfect when these are done, and distance and time pose no barrier.

I need not ask any man to be my friend, more than the sun the earth to be attracted by him -- it is not his to give, nor mine to receive. I cannot pardon my enemy let him pardon himself.

Commonly we degrade Love and Friendship by presenting them under the aspect of a trivial dualism.

What matter a few words more or less with my friend -- with all mankind -- they will still be my friends in spite of themselves. Let them stand aloof if they can -- As though the most formidable distance could rob me of any real sympathy of advantage. No -- when such interests are at stake -- time, and distance, and difference -- fall into their own places.

But alas to be actually separated from that parcel of heaven -- we call our friend -- with the suspicion that we shall no more meet him in nature -- is source enough for all the elegies that ever were written. But the true remedy will be to recover our friend piecemeal, wherever we can find a feature, as Aeetes gathered up the members of his son which Medea had strewn in her path. 

The more complete our sympathy, the more our senses are struck dumb, and we are repressed by a delicate respect -- so that to indifferent eyes we are least his friend, because no vulgar symbols pass between us.-- On after thought perhaps we come to fear that we have been the losers by such seeming indifference -- but in truth that which withholds us is the bond between us.

My friends will be as much better than my-self as my aspiration is beyond my attainment. 

 

I was struck once again by that smile the day before -- that slightest of smiles, the ocean in front of us and the ocean between us at that moment.

Just then the door opened and Holmes strode in, grey hair tousled from the wind, nervous energy radiating from his limbs. His eyes glanced to the book I was holding, and then back up into my face, and for a moment it seemed as though he must know to what entry the pages were open, what intimacy it had revealed to me -- but of course that was impossible. 

I closed the book and replaced it upon the shelf.

"I may have to find a copy of this myself. He seems a very interesting writer."

"Yes. He is very precise." Holmes looked at me for a few moments. "Would you care to go for a swim in one of the pools at the bottom of the cliffs? It looks to be an absolutely perfect day for such an exercise, and I promise to check thoroughly for any lurking jelly-like creatures."

"Holmes," said I, with a broad smile, "that sounds like a wonderful idea."

And so we went together. 

 

 

 

end


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